A trans woman has been helped to breastfeed her(sic) grandchild, in what is thought to be a world first.
The unidentified 50-year-old was helped to express up to 30ml of milk at a time, after a four week course of hormone treatment.
Researchers from Duke University reported the woman(sic) ‘lactated for a total of two weeks’ and was able to feed the four-month-old baby.
The motivation for inducing lactation was to create a ‘bond from breastfeeding that she(sic) had not been able to experience with her own five children’.
She(sic) was moved to tears by the experience, which she said had the added benefit of affirming her female gender and making her breasts larger.
The patient later stopped the course of treatment ‘due to logistical barriers’.
It is only the fifth report of a trans woman experiencing induced lactation for the purpose of breastfeeding.
Heather Welford from With Woman, a collective of midwives and breastfeeding experts, said: ‘Most people would find the idea absolutely shocking.
‘Babies come into the world ready to continue their relationship with their mother, and breastfeeding helps with this.
‘Disrupting this with attempts at breastfeeding by anyone else is frankly disturbing.’
Maya Forstater, executive director of campaign group Sex Matter, said: ‘Babies cannot consent to being participants in a study which sets aside biological reality to define treatment protocols relating to so-called “gender medicine”.
‘Men should not be permitted, still less supported, to get between babies and their mothers, or to use babies as props to validate their beliefs that they are women.’
Not a single word about the health of the baby, potential or real and immediate risk to the health of the baby, not one word about the comfort or well-being of the baby, not an iota of concern for the baby’s rights to breast milk constituted in its natural form, or any regard for a child’s rights as a human being with entitlements that should not be subjugated to (a) a man’s wish to have enlarged breasts (or ‘chest’); (b) a man’s wish to ‘create a bond’ with a child when he did not create that bond with his own children; (c) a man’s wish to create ‘a relationship’ with a child in a way that impersonates the child’s mother or attempts to do so … Is a baby created for the purpose of validating another individual’s perception of himself or claims or entitlements? This is an extraordinarily concerning story and the Duke University ethics committee (if there is one) should be calling an immediate halt to experimentation on babies or, if there is one only, a baby.